A video screen capture in a post?

How large can they be, format, any other advises.

I post a short video every now and then. I always try to keep the size (in pixels) small and length (in seconds) short. I don’t now what codec I use. I use Vokoscreen to make them. One of my first attempts had a horrible bad compression with big files, another codec would not show properly on this forum, and another one I tried works remarkably well.

I just used Vokoscreen to make a screen capture of itself. Apparently it uses libx264 and mp4 (whatever that means).

This 12s video is just 73KiBi. I think you can go up to a few MiBi, but I have never needed that.
Most often a combination of text and some screenshots is better though. I (and probably most others here) have no interest in dragging themselves though a 3 minute video just to help some other user.

Edit:
Also, the video does not show in the preview. You have to end editing your post before it shows on screen. I recommend you just try some things until you find something that works.

It is a bit of a shame that there is no “preview Program” to practice forum functions.

If you make a mess of your first few attempts, we’ll forgive you :grin:

The best combination is the original project and screenshot(s)/video.

Sometimes seeing the whole workflow is critical for finding the real problem. A video is often quicker to make than writing text, but video must be made well and thought through beforehand. The reason why the forum readers (potential helpers) don’t always like videos is because a common way to make a video is to just start a screencast program and then record several minutes of unrelated garbage. For a video to be useful it must be short and to the point, and that requires a plan, practice, several takes and maybe editing afterwards. I think describing a problem should almost never need more than a minute in a video.

I have used ShareX on Windows and SimpleScreenRecorder on Linux. I haven’t taught myself to edit videos routinely, so I must plan carefully and it usually takes a couple of takes to get it right. If I want to share a video the attitude is that the watcher’s time is more valuable than mine, even when I’m helping someone. If I don’t have time to do it properly, it’s better not to do it at all.

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Attaching the project can be useful, but without text it’s useless :slight_smile:

Even the simple video I posted above, took me three attempts to make. I also have no video editing skills (won’t even know which program to use) and re-doing a 13s video is not such a big deal. And it does indeed take some planning to keep a video both short and to the point.

Good posts and easy to agree. It is not easy to make a good video, even if it is only a screen capture. Everything is different when you try to rush directly in the action. The little “action” there is in on the KiCad. Videos tend to become extended versions plus cut screens.
My first attempt with W10 and OBS studio produced 29M video. The file size should not be very large, because computer screen usually is not very detailed and most objects are stable. This wont be Michael Schumacher film I am afraid, and the director will not get any Oscars.
There was a program called fraps to grap game screens and Windows media encoder WME. Wme could produce small files. I’ll try a software called Handbrake to make my videos smaller. https://handbrake.fr/

Handbrake is a powerful piece of software. I don’t know what that OBS studio is or how much experience you have with it, but it’s quite common to have big files for intermediate file formats. High efficiency codecs are lossy, and you do not want lossy video formats during the editing phase.

That ShareX that eelik mentioned may be a simple and usable solution.

Handbrake was surpisingly simple to use. 23M file become 5M mp4. But maximum is 4M. Picture quality was good.

I post enough videos at this forum - here’s what I do:

I use Quicktime to capture Screen Recordings (but, that’s not important). If the file is larger than 4megs, they won’t post.

So, I use Handbrake but, the trick is in how it’s setup…

Thus, I made some defualt Presets for various movies, ranging from full color, 1040p, stereo (for full movies) to small 480p Mono for posting and emailing.

Recent video I posted here (in this forum) was 48meg’s brought down to 2megs for posting.

Just like with Kicad, user needs to know how to use the software…

Example of my Presets. Also, take a look at some of the Stock Presets …

Screen Shot 2023-01-02 at 08.05.19

Mine was 2560 wide. Is 720 readable?

Best way to find out is to try it (I do know the answer)… Again, know the software you’re using and the best way to ‘know it’ is to play with it…

The vid I posted on dif pairs was 3200px wide when I started and result is 480 or 720, I don’t remember.

Perhaps once per week, I Screen record some full movie (on youtube or Prime) that is 50Gig’s… I use Handbrake to bring it down to 1gig, or so… without loss of quality.

Tried SimpleScreenRecorder on Linux and its working fine. One thing I miss: I remember some YT Videos what shows mouse and keyboard uses in a small frame downside the video. This is extremly helpful for reconstruction of any situation. E.g. I needed endless attempts to use Kicad PCB-schematic cross-probe using mouse and backtick comma key. Finally I recognized my German keyboard with front and back apostrophe on same key what needs shift to trigger the backtick. What are the tools what allow parallel recording of HID ?

On Linux I have used a small tool called key-mon. It was once an ubuntu package but nowadays must be installed by other means, IIRC I installed in using pip and it had to be started as a module or something like that. GitHub - scottkirkwood/key-mon: Automatically exported from code.google.com/p/key-mon

Unfortunately I haven’t found a similar simple tool for Windows. It’s above my paygrade to understand why on earth there doesn’t exist one. Every application I have tried have been too complicated, yet lacking what I want.

here seems to be a project for Windows and Linux: GitHub - univrsal/input-overlay: Show keyboard, gamepad and mouse input on stream
using the input overlay plugin: Input Overlay | OBS Forums

But I didnt manage to install. Also no success with pip what is prerequisite for key-mon python. Seems possible to use the deb installer on Ubuntu ?

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